Sunday, March 07, 2010

Salt-N-Pepa

It has become received wisdom that a major millennial power-shift saw rap and R'n'B become the most anti-feminist music there is. Beyoncé, in particular, is derided by feminists as the ultimate in male-objectification fantasies – but there is another interpretation, around the idea that black women at the forefront of popular culture continue to – albeit subtly – subvert gender roles. Beyoncé's huge 2008 hit "Single Ladies", ostensibly a re-establishment of modern woman as passive wife, is arguably pure parody – Beyoncé is no longer a mortal woman but a cyborg, as her robot-arm in the video demonstrates. In the words of the superb It's Her Factory blog, "the song isn't an ode to marriage and property and heterosexuality, it's an Afrofuturist feminist critique of heterosexual courtship."

Surely the seven faceless drones who wrote Single Ladies first came up with the oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh bit, then all the single ladies, all the single ladies line, then finally thought of the catchy phrase if you like it...

To assume that the sinister machines behind commercial pop music have any sort of political agenda is a false assumption in my book.